Huh. I have very similar measurements (a little smaller) but weigh quite a bit less. It's pretty fascinating to me how differently the same weight and measurements on women can look. I'm a size 8. I have no idea if what I wear was a 14 back in those days.

I do think it's nice that it's fashionable to be curvier. I think that's a lot healthier for teenagers to live with. I'm not meaning fat, I just mean not super thin.

Where's the fact-checking on this?According to Wikipedia, the Venus de Milo statue: '...is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high.'

So how did they get 5'7" from 6'8"?And wouldn't a 5'7" woman have been rather tall by 1912 standards; and I bet 171 pounds would have been fairly hefty in those days, too. Wikipedia says that the average modern adult woman is 5'4" tall, and woman are certainly taller (and heavier) now than they were 100 years ago.

I suspect the "most nearly pefect physical specimen" definition is one based on eugenics, not aesthetics, given the place and time of this article. Eugenics was all the rage among progressives and academics in the early 20th century.

"She is a splendid example of the very best of American womanhood today; well-poised, self-reliant, quick-witted and able to meet the world on its own terms without the subterfuges of her grandmothers."

American women today, and Women's Studies professors, could learn a lot from that. We're taught that the women of the past were trained to be weak, submissive, dependent, and ignorant. Elsie puts most of the women I meet to shame. Note too that the examining physician was a woman -- not something we envision occurring in 1913.